Sound Biting Conspiracy: From India with “Love Jihad”

Frøystad, Kathinka

doi:10.3390/rel12121064

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…As pointed out in several of the articles in this Special Issue, in India (Frøystad 2021;Nielsen and Nilsen 2021) and Burma/Myanmar (Frydenlund 2021), the "Love Jihad" trope has historical precursors that are activated and regenerated by nationalist leaders and activists in the present. However, while contemporary "Love Jihad" campaigns in India certainly overlap with earlier nationalist assertions about Muslim men being disloyal (to women, and thus to the nation) and greedy (because they allegedly receive money to seduce Hindu women), we suggest that the contemporary version of this idea also contains important new dimensions.…”

Section: "Love Jihad" As Trope and Analytical Categorymentioning

confidence: 96%

“…A salient topic within such debates was the question about conversion of the female partner. As discussed by Frøystad (2021), Frydenlund (2021), andZorgati (2021) in this Special Issue, anti-Muslim conspiracy theories such as "love jihad" are added to already existing social processes of contestation and boundary work with regard to interreligious marriages.…”

Section: "Love Jihad" As Trope and Analytical Categorymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Introduction: “Love Jihad”: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory Muslim Male

Frydenlund

Leidig

2022

Religions

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The Introduction to this Special Issue on ‘“Love Jihad”: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory Muslim Male’ provides a theoretical overview and suggests an analytical lens for how to understand “Love Jihad” and related notions of Islamization through marriage, sexuality, and reproduction. We define “Love Jihad” as the notion that Muslim men intentionally and strategically allure and entrap non-Muslim women with the intent to marry and convert them to Islam as part of an Islamization project. We suggest a two-fold understanding of the concept of “Love Jihad”. First, the concept needs to be understood as a globalizing trope, originating from India and spreading to a wide range of cultural and national contexts across the world. Second, we propose to understand the specific term “love jihad” beyond its referential specificity, and thereby broadening it into an analytical concept for exploring related concepts (such as “sexual jihad” and “demographic jihad”), as well as related notions of Muslim men as sexual predators (in certain geographical settings known as “rapefugees”). We therefore include in our analysis related notions such as Islamic womb fare, “grooming”, “The Great Replacement”, and “unethical conversion” in marriage where they relate to flows of gendered nationalist imaginaries of the Muslim “Other”. The aim of this Introduction—as well as the Special Issue—is to contribute to the study of Islamophobia as a global phenomenon and to deepen our understanding of the gendered imaginaries of anti-Muslim nationalist formations across the world.

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Section: "Love Jihad" As Trope and Analytical Categorymentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: "Love Jihad" As Trope and Analytical Categorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: “Love Jihad”: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory Muslim Male

Frydenlund

Leidig

2022

Religions

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“…To propagate the theory, the Hindu right has conjured several conspiracy theories against Muslims, as well as drawn upon love jihad, UPSC jihad, land jihad, and grooming jihad. Among those conspiracy theories, love jihad, circulated by the Hindu nationalists, holds that Muslim men conspire to lure Hindu women into marrying them in order to alter India's religious demographics as a part of a strategy of political takeover (Frøystad, 2021). Concepts similar to love jihad have existed since 1920s -that is, before India's independence -when Arya Samaj 11 and other Hindu revivalists bodies were spearheading a propaganda campaign that portrayed Muslim men as aggressive individuals prone to high sexual appetites, lecherous behavior, and religious fanaticism (Gupta, 2009).…”

Section: Conspiracy Theories (Ie Love Jihad and Other Conspiracies)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in the 2013-2014 election campaign, the BJP made love jihad one of its primary issues at the polls, which led to a massive spike in discussions about this conspiracy. At present, as several BJP-ruled states have either enacted new laws or amended existing ones to prevent the alleged love jihad, the concept and its discussion are ubiquitous (Frøystad, 2021).…”

Section: Conspiracy Theories (Ie Love Jihad and Other Conspiracies)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Themes of Right-Wing Extremism in Hindutva Discourse on Twitter

Ghasiya¹,

Ahnert²,

Sasahara³

2022

Preprint

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Hindutva, the core political ideology of India's current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seeks to transform constitutionally secular India into a Hindu Rashtra (`Hindu nation'). Although Hindutva has all of the features of right-wing extremism (RWE), it is nevertheless viewed as a sociopolitical phenomenon due to the Eurocentric nature of RWE discourse. Recent theoretical and analytical research has sought to showcase the similarity between RWE and Hindutva, whereas empirical research on their relationship has not been conducted. To fill that gap, in our study we collected 15 million tweets, and in network analysis, identified prominent themes of RWE, including exclusionary nationalism, conspiracy theories, and anti-minority violence and hate speech among the supporters of Hindutva and BJP. Furthermore, our toxicity analysis performed to understand which themes produced higher levels of toxicity, we found that Hindi-language tweets related to conspiracy theories and anti-minority violence or hate speech were more toxic than English-language tweets. Given that the growing global presence and normalisation of RWE-based ideas and movements are sources of concern for political science researchers, our research broadens the discussion on RWE in the Indian context and invites researchers to further investigate Hindutva from the perspective of RWE.

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“…The neologism "Love Jihad" originated in India around 2002, and among its first usages in the political sphere goes back to Hindutva organizations in South India in 2007. It was however with a court case in 2009 that the concept came into regional and national prominence (see Frøystad 2021;Nielsen and Nilsen 2021). "Love Jihad" is a Hindu nationalist conspiracy theory that claims that Indian Muslims are conspiring to increase their demographic size within the Indian population by luring Hindu women into a so-called "love marriage" and eventually converting them to Islam (Gupta 2016).…”

Section: Conceptual Clarifications: Buddhist Islamophobia Buddhist Protectionism "Love Jihad" and "Femonationalism"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting Buddhist Women from Muslim Men: “Love Jihad” and the Rise of Islamophobia in Myanmar

Frydenlund

2021

Religions

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Buddhist protectionism in contemporary Myanmar revolves around fears of the decline of Buddhism and deracination of the amyo (group/“race”). Buddhist protectionists and Burmese nationalists have declared Islam and Muslims the greatest threat to race and religion, and Myanmar has witnessed widespread distribution of anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim content, as well as massive violence against Muslim minority communities, the Rohingya in particular. The Indian neologism “Love Jihad” has scarce reference in contemporary Burmese Buddhist discourses, but, importantly, the tropes of aggressive male Muslim sexuality and (forced) conversion through marriage (“love jihad”) have been one of the core issues in Buddhist protectionism in Myanmar. The article shows that such tropes of the threatening foreign male have strong historical legacies in Myanmar, going back to colonial Burma when Burmese concerns over Indian male immigrant workers resulted in both anti-Indian violence and anti-miscegenation laws. Importantly, however, compared to colonial Indophobia and military era xenophobic nationalism, contemporary constructions are informed by new political realities and global forces, which have changed Buddhist protectionist imaginaries of gender and sexuality in important ways. Building on Sara R. Farris’ concept of “femonationalism”, and Roger Brubaker’s concept of civilizationism, the article shows how Global Islamophobia, as well as global discourses on women’s rights and religious freedom, have informed Buddhist protectionism beyond ethnonationalism in the traditional sense.

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Sound Biting Conspiracy: From India with “Love Jihad”

Cited by 9 publications

References 46 publications

Introduction: “Love Jihad”: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory Muslim Male

Introduction: “Love Jihad”: Sexuality, Reproduction and the Construction of the Predatory Muslim Male

Identifying Themes of Right-Wing Extremism in Hindutva Discourse on Twitter

Protecting Buddhist Women from Muslim Men: “Love Jihad” and the Rise of Islamophobia in Myanmar

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